Tom Devine
Sir Thomas Martin Devine is a historian and author recognised for his work on Scottish history and the global history of the Scottish people.
Early and Personal Life
Devine was born into an Irish Catholic family in Motherwell, Scotland. His father was a schoolteacher. He graduated from the University of Strathclyde in 1968 with First Class Honours in Economic and Social History, the only First awarded in the subject from 1968 to 1978.Academic career
In 1969, a few months after beginning doctoral research, he was appointed Assistant Lecturer in History at the University of Strathclyde and thereafter was promoted to Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Reader. He was appointed Professor of Scottish History at the University in 1988 and later became Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, then Deputy Principal for a term of four years.In 1998, he moved to the University of Aberdeen to become the founding Director of the newly-established Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies and was appointed to the inaugural Chair of the externally funded Glucksman Professorship of Irish and Scottish Studies. RIISS soon became recognised by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council as an AHRC Centre of Excellence, in receipt of over £2 million in grants over two competitive phases, and finally only one of two such Centres in the UK.
In 2005, Devine was appointed to the prestigious Sir William Fraser Chair of Scottish History and Palaeography at the University of Edinburgh, recognised as the premier professorial post in the field of Scottish Historical Studies. He remained in this position until 2012, when he became Personal Senior Research Professor in History.He was also Founding Director of the externally-funded Scottish Centre for Diaspora Studies from 2010 until 2014. Devine finally retired from Edinburgh in 2015, recognised widely as Scotland's foremost living historian,and was appointed Professor Emeritus. At his retirement celebration, messages of congratulation were received from the then Prime Minister of the UK,David Cameron,the former PM Gordon Brown, the First Minister of Scotland and the Heads of the Scottish Labour and Liberal Democratic parties. He has remained active in research with seven volumes authored or edited since his 'retirement' to date.
Awards and honours
Devine was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of sciences and letters, in 1992, and a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994. He was elected an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2001,confirming the unusual distinction of election to all three national academies in the British Isles for which he is eligible. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, and the Royal Society of Arts.Devine was awarded the Royal Medal, Scotland's supreme academic accolade, by HM The Queen in 2001, the only historian to receive the honour to date. The Medals recognise 'individuals who have gained the highest distinction and international repute for pioneering work in their field of expertise'. He was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2005 New Year Honours for services to Scottish History. In 2012, he was awarded RSE’s inaugural Sir Walter Scott Prize for his outstanding contribution to Scottish History andyear later the RSE's Senior Beltane Prize for Public Engagement across all disciplines.
He was knighted in the 2014 Birthday Honours for 'services to the study of Scottish history',the first and only historian of Scotland to be so honoured.
With Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,Devine is one of only two Scottish-born 'men of letters' to have received the accolade of knighthood since 1707.The title conferred on Sir Walter Scottin 1820 was a baronetcy.
In 2016, Edinburgh University Press published Global Migrations, edited by Angela McCarthy and John M Mackenzie, 'A tribute to Professor Sir Tom Devine FBA the leading historian of modern Scotland and its diaspora'. In July 2018, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the UK all-party parliamentary group on Archives and History of the Houses of Commons and Lords, the first historian from a Scottish university to be so honoured. Previous awardees were Professor Eric Hobsbawm CH FBA,Asa Lord Briggs FBA,Sir Keith Thomas CH FBA and Sir Michael Howard OM FBA.
In all, Devine has received eighteen national and international awards and four honorary degrees.
The Times stated in 2013 that 'Professor Tom Devine is as close to a national bard as the nation has... Scotland's greatest living historian'. For Scottish Field 'Sir Tom Devine is the rock star of Caledonian historians whose work in unravelling Scottish identity makes him de facto the father of the nation'.He was listed in the Top Twenty of The Herald's Power 100: 'The Most Powerful and Influential People in Scotland-' The nation's preeminent historian,a towering and fearless intellect who has reshaped the way the Scottish past is viewed'. 'The contribution Tom Devine has made to the study of Scottish history is unequaled.'Journal of British Studies.The Guardian described Devine as 'The doyen of Scottish historians' in November 2019.
Penguin Books confirmed in March 2020 that Devine's The Scottish Nation had reached 100,000 in UK sales; when first published it outsold the Harry Potter books in Scotland for a short time..For appraisals of the book by fellow scholars see https://www.thenational.scot/news/18501312.scot-nation/
Books
- The Tobacco Lords: A Study of the Tobacco Merchants of Glasgow and their Trading Activities, c. 1740–90.
- Lairds and Improvement in the Scotland of the Enlightenment
- A Scottish Firm in Virginia, 1767–1777, William Cunninghame and Co.
- Scotland and Ireland, 1600 to 1850.
- Farm Servants and Labour in Lowland Scotland, 1770–1914
- People and Society in Scotland, Volume 1, 1760–1830
- The Great Highland Famine: Hunger, Emigration and the Scottish Highlands in the Nineteenth Century, John Donald, 1988,reprinted 1995, 2008,2020).
- Improvement and Enlightenment
- Conflict and Stability in Scottish Society, 1700–1850
- Irish Immigrants and Scottish Society in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century
- Scottish Emigration and Scottish Society
- Scottish Elites
- Industry, Business and Society in Scotland since 1700
- The Transformation of Rural Scotland:Social Change and the Agrarian Economy, 1660–1815
- St Mary's Hamilton: A Social History, 1646 – 1996
- Exploring the Scottish Past
- Scotland in the Twentieth Century
- Eighteenth-century Scotland
- Celebrating Columba: Irish-Scottish Connections, 597–1997
- The Scottish Nation: 1700–2000.Multiple reprints and new editions,the most recent being The Scottish Nation:A Modern History.As at 2020 the book had sold over 100,000 copies in the UK alone.
- Scotland's Shame?: Bigotry and Sectarianism in Modern Scotland
- Being Scottish: Personal Reflections on Scottish Identity Today
- Scotland's Empire and the Shaping of the Americas, 1600–1815
- Scotland's Empire, 1600–1815.
- The Transformation of Scotland; The Economy since 1700
- Clearance and Improvement: Land, Power and People in Scotland 1700–1900
- The Scottish Nation 1700 to 2007.
- Scotland and the Union 1707 to 2007
- Scotland and Poland: Historical Connections
- To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750–2010.
- Scotland and the British Empire
- The Oxford Handbook of Modern Scottish History, 1500–2010
- The Scotland Trilogy
- Recovering Scotland's Slavery Past: The Caribbean Connection.
- Independence or Union: Scotland's Past and Scotland's Present.
- The Scottish Experience in Asia c. 1700 to the Present: Sojourners and Settlers
- Scotland and the British Empire
- Tea and Empire: James Taylor in Victorian Ceylon.
- New Scots: Scotland's Immigrant Communities since 1945
- The Scottish Clearances: A History of the Dispossessed 1600-1900